Bael the Bard: A Reinterpretation
Sept 12, 2017 4:30:57 GMT
Weasel Pie and freyfamilyreunion like this
Post by Some Pig No Doubt on Sept 12, 2017 4:30:57 GMT
Slight segue from the discussion in multiple other threads. I had intended to talk about the significance of the blue roses at the Harrenhal tourney but instead started down a path of research discovery that grew in the telling... so I made a separate thread.
In ACOK, we get from Ygritte the tale of Bael the Bard and the famous blue rose of Winterfell.
"That's all in where you're standing too," Ygritte said. "The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael's head, but never could take him, and the taste o' failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o' that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter's night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means 'deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak."
"North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark's own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he'd made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. 'All I ask is a flower,' Bael answered, 'the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell.'
"Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o' the winter roses be plucked for the singer's payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished . . . and so had Lord Brandon's maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain."
"Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o' Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o' Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child's cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast."
"Bael had brought her back?"
"No. They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says . . . though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what's certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he'd plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark."
"It never happened," Jon said.
She shrugged. "Might be it did, might be it didn't. It is a good song, though. My mother used to sing it to me. She was a woman too, Jon Snow. Like yours." She rubbed her throat where his dirk had cut her. "The song ends when they find the babe, but there is a darker end to the story. Thirty years later, when Bael was King-beyond-the-Wall and led the free folk south, it was young Lord Stark who met him at the Frozen Ford . . . and killed him, for Bael would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword."
"So the son slew the father instead," said Jon.
"Aye," she said, "but the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing. When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her. One o' his lords peeled the skin off him and wore him for a cloak."
Nice, tale right? We already know all the traditional interpretations....blue rose left by a false singer in place of a Stark maiden(head); mocking gesture; signifies shame to Stark house – dad Stark has been fooled, daughter Stark has been despoiled by a lesser/common man, ruining her chances of legitimately carrying on the line and instead having to continue it through a bastard son.
However, in re-reading this tale just now , I think we’re getting hints to something else.
First, a king beyond the Wall, time frame undetermined. The tale has inconsistencies with reference to "Lord" Stark, indicating that this happened after Targaryen rule, but there's no reference to this event in recent Stark history, Jon doesn't know this story at all, and Bran doesn't mention any "Brandon the Daughterless" or anything hinting that this is a post-conquest occurrence. Next there's the mention of a flaying presumably committed by a member of House Bolton. The Boltons haven't "officially" flayed their enemies in 1000 years, since they pledged fealty to Winterfell - although the practice itself dates back far further, as Jaime notes below:
I think we can safely assume that the origin of this tale goes back a long time. We don't know HOW long, but Jon (though not aware of this story) is familiar enough with Bael the Bard to place his existence before that of Raymund Redbeard, and Qhorin Halfhand follows us with putting Bael chronologically after Joramun, who supposedly joined with the Stark in Winterfell to defeat the Night's King back in the Age of Heroes.
Nothing new there, though. As with most old legends and tales, there's really no way to quantify age/time period, much less what parts are true and what has been embellished/created over the centuries - so let's just stick with "a really long time ago and leave it at that. But let’s go through the story itself again, because I don’t believe this is telling us a story of a sneaky womanizer – I think this tale is indicative of a dark side of House Stark.
This Stark in Winterfell, Brandon the Daughterless, has no sons. The main Stark bloodline is in danger of going cold. Although there are other Starks around that have since married into vassal houses, the blood has been diluted; that of of the old Kings of Winter is at risk.
Enter Bael. It just so happens that he enters the picture from beyond the Wall on a winter’s night right when the winter roses had come into bloom. Read between the lines here – the "winter rose" isn’t the dang flower in the garden, it’s the Stark maiden herself who has flowered. She has come of age to mate.
Next, I find it interesting that Bael gifts the Lord Stark with "song", old songs and new ones he'd made himself, and even more interestng that the payment asked of this "song" is the beautiful winter rose, this rare and precious flower.
Translated: the only daughter of Winterfell, and the last hope for her line.
The Lord Stark commands that the winter rose be plucked in order to be given to Bael; and so it was done. Well, we all know what it means to pluck a maiden’s flower – so here we have the Stark in Winterfell overseeing the loss of his daughter’s virginity before he hands her over; I suspect that the Lord Stark did the deed himself..or rather, had already done it.
In the morning, the maiden’s bed is empty, save for the winter rose, pale blue for deception. I wonder if we have reading this message backwards – as in, Bael is not indicating that he tricked the Stark Lord, he is acknowledging that the Stark Lord tricked him by giving Bael used goods.
Sad Lord Stark is sad; he believes he has lost his winter rose forever and House Stark is pretty much over. Until...
The rose and her babe reappear in Winterfell. Bael had apparently hidden her in the crypts , where she gave birth to a son...a son born with the dead. The Stark daughter is found "asleep" with the babe at her breast, which IMO has similar imagery to the dead mother direwolf and her very much alive pups attempting to nurse off her corpse. Oddly, Ygritte says, "The song ends when they find the babe“, but that babe grows to be the next Lord Stark, continuing the bloodline.
What I find really intriguing about this is 1) the song ending when the babe is returned. If Bael gave the Lord Stark a SONG in exchange for the winter rose, and the SONG ended when Lord Stark discovered his new grandson, this speaks to me of a trade. A Faustian bargain of some sort- perhaps an exchange of a rare and precious gift in return for an heir? I think of the Faceless Men, and the "price" that must be paid for their services – a price most dear to the person making the request, but still always within their means.
.. and 2) the son of Bael becomes the next Lord Stark - he's not labeled as a bastard, he doesn't go on to rule as baseborn Lord Snow...he's a Stark. He gets the name despite the shame - and I wonder if that's because Young Lord Stark had "more of the north" in him from the start. A Magical Special Baby™, a half-human monster.
And here is the crux of this argument – I get the feeling that there is truth to this legend, but a very dark truth. The trickster Bael went to teach the lord a lesson all right, but NOT for calling him craven. No, I’m thinking that Bael took this winter rose for one of two reasons (or both):
- She was the "bride price" he extracted from her father for 'plucking' her in new bloom and trying to cheat Bael of his full payment;
OR
- he took her to be used as a breeding vessel in exchange for the life of the child she bore – the future heir to Winterfell, the abomination born with the dead. A cursed child that will be a walking, talking reminder of the incest. And since Bael took her to the crypts to hide, my thoughts are that the maiden wasn't given over to the Others...she was given to the Kings of Winter in their tombs.
(Or perhaps...those are one and the same. )
This is very, very similar to what we see with Craster and his daughter-wives, just reversed – Craster sacrifices his incest-bred sons to the Cold Gods, but is allowed to keep his daughters and continue to breed with them, creating more sons.
Could we have an inverse reciprocal arrangement with the Starks and their daughters? Weasel Pie suggested there might be some kind of icky "Stark selective breeding program" going on, and that seems likely – but with a twist:
If it involves Starkcest first. Regardless of who fathered the babe - Bael or the Lord Stark - it goes back to a forbidden sexual relationship between family members.
I think this may point to the current story with regards to Lyanna Stark, especially if you like the BrandonDaddy angle – a rare and precious winter rose, plucked first by a family member before being handed over to a fraud. A fraud who later became a ruler in his own right as King Beyond the Wall.
Lyanna Stark, given blue roses at the Tourney of Harrenhal. Her brother Brandon Stark growing enraged at the gesture. Blue roses = plucked roses. Roses plucked by a Stark.
Since we already have numerous parallels between Lyanna and Daenerys, let me throw another at you:
Dany being "traded" to Drogo - Viserys, her older brother, almost ruining the whole operation by entering her room the night before the wedding to steal her virginity...the thing of most value to the Dothraki king.
Viserys was foiled by the guards outside her door – what if Lyanna Stark had no guards?
Conclusion: Lyanna opened the door willingly to her older brother, who plucked the winter rose that was already allocated as a gift to another man... and Rhaegar Targaryen knew. He knew about the incest when he gave the laurel of roses, blue as frost, to the new Queen of Love and Beaty, the fairest and rarest rose in Winterfell.
There's a good chance that he knew that she was with child too, carrying the Magical Special Baby™ that would bear the mark of Starkcest - the "heavy curse" in Craster terms - but that might also be just perfect for his dragon hatching scheme. So, like the tale, the "singer" steals the maiden - but this time, he's keeping the kid.
Bonus stuff:
At the conclusion of the tale, the "darker end to the story", the Young Lord Stark kills his own father at the Frozen Ford, committing the grievous act of kinslaying. Do we have another instance of kinslaying in the Stark history?
Perhaps...
"Some say he was a Bolton," Old Nan would always end. "Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down." She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. "He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room."
Old Bael magically –and here I suspect that in the literal sense – breaches the Wall one night, and skips into Winterfell big as you please. That's a pretty bold move.
Bael entered Winterfell and partook of the Lord Stark's guest right disguised as a singer named Sygerrik, or "deceiver".
What is another word for "deceiver"? Trickster.
What in ASOIAF is associated with tricks and deception? Crows.
And Old Nan knows stuff, people! Always trust Old Nan!!
Since Old Nan believes that the Night’s King was a Stark, let's remind ourselves of who the Night's King also was:
The 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. A crow.
In addition, Jon doesn‘t know about the tale of Bael the Bard, nor does Bran mention Brandon the Daughterless in his Brandon Starks of Old recaps. This brings to mind the following:
The Night’s King name was stricken from record. There is no Brandon the Daughterless known to the children of Winterfell.
And what led to the fall of the Night's King, again?
His corpse queen with her white skin and blue eyes = the winter rose from the crypts of Winterfell. He gave her his seed and he gave her his soul.
The Stark of Winterfell brought him down. Bael's son, the young Lord Stark, unwittingly slew his father in battle, because the father could not raise sword to his blood.
(Show creep: The Night King has yet to directly & personally attack Jon Snow, despite multiple opportunities.)
Finally, if you like the Bran the Timelord idea, chew on the possibility that the Night's King is a corrupted version of that original Brandon Stark...and if the babe in the crypts WAS fathered by "Bael" via some unnatural means, this implies that the descendants of House Stark all come from the Night's King. Magical Special Baby™ indeed.
OK, OK, there are inconsistencies between the two tales - father, brother, 13, 30, I get it. But it sounds good, right? And even if the stories ARE different and just have similar-sounding elements, I believe the overall purpose is the same - warning to House Stark not to mate - and certainly not to reproduce - with first-degree relatives. We don't know yet what the mark of Starkcest will be, but being as Jon was sent the weirwood-colored Ghost and still has a dark path to walk, I suspect we shall soon find out.
One final quote:
In ACOK, we get from Ygritte the tale of Bael the Bard and the famous blue rose of Winterfell.
"That's all in where you're standing too," Ygritte said. "The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael's head, but never could take him, and the taste o' failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o' that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter's night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means 'deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak."
"North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark's own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he'd made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. 'All I ask is a flower,' Bael answered, 'the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell.'
"Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o' the winter roses be plucked for the singer's payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished . . . and so had Lord Brandon's maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain."
"Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o' Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o' Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child's cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast."
"Bael had brought her back?"
"No. They had been in Winterfell all the time, hiding with the dead beneath the castle. The maid loved Bael so dearly she bore him a son, the song says . . . though if truth be told, all the maids love Bael in them songs he wrote. Be that as it may, what's certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he'd plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark."
"It never happened," Jon said.
She shrugged. "Might be it did, might be it didn't. It is a good song, though. My mother used to sing it to me. She was a woman too, Jon Snow. Like yours." She rubbed her throat where his dirk had cut her. "The song ends when they find the babe, but there is a darker end to the story. Thirty years later, when Bael was King-beyond-the-Wall and led the free folk south, it was young Lord Stark who met him at the Frozen Ford . . . and killed him, for Bael would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword."
"So the son slew the father instead," said Jon.
"Aye," she said, "but the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing. When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her. One o' his lords peeled the skin off him and wore him for a cloak."
Nice, tale right? We already know all the traditional interpretations....blue rose left by a false singer in place of a Stark maiden(head); mocking gesture; signifies shame to Stark house – dad Stark has been fooled, daughter Stark has been despoiled by a lesser/common man, ruining her chances of legitimately carrying on the line and instead having to continue it through a bastard son.
However, in re-reading this tale just now , I think we’re getting hints to something else.
First, a king beyond the Wall, time frame undetermined. The tale has inconsistencies with reference to "Lord" Stark, indicating that this happened after Targaryen rule, but there's no reference to this event in recent Stark history, Jon doesn't know this story at all, and Bran doesn't mention any "Brandon the Daughterless" or anything hinting that this is a post-conquest occurrence. Next there's the mention of a flaying presumably committed by a member of House Bolton. The Boltons haven't "officially" flayed their enemies in 1000 years, since they pledged fealty to Winterfell - although the practice itself dates back far further, as Jaime notes below:
"Every great lord has unruly bannermen who envy him his place," he told her afterward. "My father had the Reynes and Tarbecks, the Tyrells have the Florents, Hoster Tully had Walder Frey. Only strength keeps such men in their place. The moment they smell weakness . . . during the Age of Heroes, the Boltons used to flay the Starks and wear their skins as cloaks."
I think we can safely assume that the origin of this tale goes back a long time. We don't know HOW long, but Jon (though not aware of this story) is familiar enough with Bael the Bard to place his existence before that of Raymund Redbeard, and Qhorin Halfhand follows us with putting Bael chronologically after Joramun, who supposedly joined with the Stark in Winterfell to defeat the Night's King back in the Age of Heroes.
"Wildlings have invaded the realm before." Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at Winterfell. "Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my grandfather's grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard."
"Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth.
"Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth.
Nothing new there, though. As with most old legends and tales, there's really no way to quantify age/time period, much less what parts are true and what has been embellished/created over the centuries - so let's just stick with "a really long time ago and leave it at that. But let’s go through the story itself again, because I don’t believe this is telling us a story of a sneaky womanizer – I think this tale is indicative of a dark side of House Stark.
This Stark in Winterfell, Brandon the Daughterless, has no sons. The main Stark bloodline is in danger of going cold. Although there are other Starks around that have since married into vassal houses, the blood has been diluted; that of of the old Kings of Winter is at risk.
Enter Bael. It just so happens that he enters the picture from beyond the Wall on a winter’s night right when the winter roses had come into bloom. Read between the lines here – the "winter rose" isn’t the dang flower in the garden, it’s the Stark maiden herself who has flowered. She has come of age to mate.
Next, I find it interesting that Bael gifts the Lord Stark with "song", old songs and new ones he'd made himself, and even more interestng that the payment asked of this "song" is the beautiful winter rose, this rare and precious flower.
Translated: the only daughter of Winterfell, and the last hope for her line.
The Lord Stark commands that the winter rose be plucked in order to be given to Bael; and so it was done. Well, we all know what it means to pluck a maiden’s flower – so here we have the Stark in Winterfell overseeing the loss of his daughter’s virginity before he hands her over; I suspect that the Lord Stark did the deed himself..or rather, had already done it.
In the morning, the maiden’s bed is empty, save for the winter rose, pale blue for deception. I wonder if we have reading this message backwards – as in, Bael is not indicating that he tricked the Stark Lord, he is acknowledging that the Stark Lord tricked him by giving Bael used goods.
Sad Lord Stark is sad; he believes he has lost his winter rose forever and House Stark is pretty much over. Until...
The rose and her babe reappear in Winterfell. Bael had apparently hidden her in the crypts , where she gave birth to a son...a son born with the dead. The Stark daughter is found "asleep" with the babe at her breast, which IMO has similar imagery to the dead mother direwolf and her very much alive pups attempting to nurse off her corpse. Oddly, Ygritte says, "The song ends when they find the babe“, but that babe grows to be the next Lord Stark, continuing the bloodline.
What I find really intriguing about this is 1) the song ending when the babe is returned. If Bael gave the Lord Stark a SONG in exchange for the winter rose, and the SONG ended when Lord Stark discovered his new grandson, this speaks to me of a trade. A Faustian bargain of some sort- perhaps an exchange of a rare and precious gift in return for an heir? I think of the Faceless Men, and the "price" that must be paid for their services – a price most dear to the person making the request, but still always within their means.
.. and 2) the son of Bael becomes the next Lord Stark - he's not labeled as a bastard, he doesn't go on to rule as baseborn Lord Snow...he's a Stark. He gets the name despite the shame - and I wonder if that's because Young Lord Stark had "more of the north" in him from the start. A Magical Special Baby™, a half-human monster.
And here is the crux of this argument – I get the feeling that there is truth to this legend, but a very dark truth. The trickster Bael went to teach the lord a lesson all right, but NOT for calling him craven. No, I’m thinking that Bael took this winter rose for one of two reasons (or both):
- She was the "bride price" he extracted from her father for 'plucking' her in new bloom and trying to cheat Bael of his full payment;
OR
- he took her to be used as a breeding vessel in exchange for the life of the child she bore – the future heir to Winterfell, the abomination born with the dead. A cursed child that will be a walking, talking reminder of the incest. And since Bael took her to the crypts to hide, my thoughts are that the maiden wasn't given over to the Others...she was given to the Kings of Winter in their tombs.
(Or perhaps...those are one and the same. )
This is very, very similar to what we see with Craster and his daughter-wives, just reversed – Craster sacrifices his incest-bred sons to the Cold Gods, but is allowed to keep his daughters and continue to breed with them, creating more sons.
Could we have an inverse reciprocal arrangement with the Starks and their daughters? Weasel Pie suggested there might be some kind of icky "Stark selective breeding program" going on, and that seems likely – but with a twist:
If it involves Starkcest first. Regardless of who fathered the babe - Bael or the Lord Stark - it goes back to a forbidden sexual relationship between family members.
I think this may point to the current story with regards to Lyanna Stark, especially if you like the BrandonDaddy angle – a rare and precious winter rose, plucked first by a family member before being handed over to a fraud. A fraud who later became a ruler in his own right as King Beyond the Wall.
Lyanna Stark, given blue roses at the Tourney of Harrenhal. Her brother Brandon Stark growing enraged at the gesture. Blue roses = plucked roses. Roses plucked by a Stark.
Since we already have numerous parallels between Lyanna and Daenerys, let me throw another at you:
Dany being "traded" to Drogo - Viserys, her older brother, almost ruining the whole operation by entering her room the night before the wedding to steal her virginity...the thing of most value to the Dothraki king.
"That did not stop you selling her to Khal Drogo …"
"Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal's friendship. A vain young man, and greedy. Viserys lusted for his father's throne, but he lusted for Daenerys too, and was loath to give her up. The night before the princess wed he tried to steal into her bed, insisting that if he could not have her hand, he would claim her maidenhead. Had I not taken the precaution of posting guards upon her door, Viserys might have undone years of planning."
"Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal's friendship. A vain young man, and greedy. Viserys lusted for his father's throne, but he lusted for Daenerys too, and was loath to give her up. The night before the princess wed he tried to steal into her bed, insisting that if he could not have her hand, he would claim her maidenhead. Had I not taken the precaution of posting guards upon her door, Viserys might have undone years of planning."
Viserys was foiled by the guards outside her door – what if Lyanna Stark had no guards?
Conclusion: Lyanna opened the door willingly to her older brother, who plucked the winter rose that was already allocated as a gift to another man... and Rhaegar Targaryen knew. He knew about the incest when he gave the laurel of roses, blue as frost, to the new Queen of Love and Beaty, the fairest and rarest rose in Winterfell.
There's a good chance that he knew that she was with child too, carrying the Magical Special Baby™ that would bear the mark of Starkcest - the "heavy curse" in Craster terms - but that might also be just perfect for his dragon hatching scheme. So, like the tale, the "singer" steals the maiden - but this time, he's keeping the kid.
Bonus stuff:
At the conclusion of the tale, the "darker end to the story", the Young Lord Stark kills his own father at the Frozen Ford, committing the grievous act of kinslaying. Do we have another instance of kinslaying in the Stark history?
Perhaps...
"Some say he was a Bolton," Old Nan would always end. "Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down." She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. "He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room."
Old Bael magically –and here I suspect that in the literal sense – breaches the Wall one night, and skips into Winterfell big as you please. That's a pretty bold move.
[He was] a warrior who knew no fear. "And that was the fault in him," she would add, "for all men must know fear."
Bael entered Winterfell and partook of the Lord Stark's guest right disguised as a singer named Sygerrik, or "deceiver".
What is another word for "deceiver"? Trickster.
What in ASOIAF is associated with tricks and deception? Crows.
The crow had tricked him into flying, but when he woke up he was broken and the world was changed.
"Let him die," insisted the Lord of Bones. "The black crow is a tricksy bird. I trust him not."
"The crow lied when he said I could fly, and your brother lied too.".
"Crows are all liars," Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework.
And Old Nan knows stuff, people! Always trust Old Nan!!
Since Old Nan believes that the Night’s King was a Stark, let's remind ourselves of who the Night's King also was:
The 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. A crow.
In addition, Jon doesn‘t know about the tale of Bael the Bard, nor does Bran mention Brandon the Daughterless in his Brandon Starks of Old recaps. This brings to mind the following:
After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.
And what led to the fall of the Night's King, again?
A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage.
His corpse queen with her white skin and blue eyes = the winter rose from the crypts of Winterfell. He gave her his seed and he gave her his soul.
The Stark of Winterfell brought him down. Bael's son, the young Lord Stark, unwittingly slew his father in battle, because the father could not raise sword to his blood.
(Show creep: The Night King has yet to directly & personally attack Jon Snow, despite multiple opportunities.)
Finally, if you like the Bran the Timelord idea, chew on the possibility that the Night's King is a corrupted version of that original Brandon Stark...and if the babe in the crypts WAS fathered by "Bael" via some unnatural means, this implies that the descendants of House Stark all come from the Night's King. Magical Special Baby™ indeed.
OK, OK, there are inconsistencies between the two tales - father, brother, 13, 30, I get it. But it sounds good, right? And even if the stories ARE different and just have similar-sounding elements, I believe the overall purpose is the same - warning to House Stark not to mate - and certainly not to reproduce - with first-degree relatives. We don't know yet what the mark of Starkcest will be, but being as Jon was sent the weirwood-colored Ghost and still has a dark path to walk, I suspect we shall soon find out.
One final quote:
Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark he'd heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitch-dark, his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his deep sense of terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the Wall and walked, restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the east. It was only a dream. I am a brother of the Night's Watch now, not a frightened boy.